t was a hot afternoon at the end of August.

Emma sat at her desk in her office at the Leeds store, checking a list of sale figures for Paula. Quite suddenly she had the feeling she was not alone. She looked up quickly and glanced at the open door leading into Paula's office, expecting to see her granddaughter standing there.

There was no sign of Paula.

"I'm beginning to imagine things," Emma said out loud, and then laughed under her breath. I'm also talking to myself, she thought. I hope I'm not getting senile. That state of affairs I couldn't bear.

She put down her pen and stared at the sheet of figures on her desk. She was filled with distaste, found she no longer had any interest in them whatsoever. She peered at her watch. It was almost five. Paula usually slipped out onto one of the floors around this time, and perhaps she had gone to meet Emily in.the Rayne-Delman shoe salon. Emily had said something about buying shoes when she had phoned from her office at Genret earlier in the day.

A smile of intense pleasure touched the corners of Emma's implacable mouth, softening its resoluteness. They were having a girls' evening at Pennistone Royal tonight, as they often did on Fridays. Just the three of them and Merry O'Neill.

Emma leaned back in her chair, ruminating on the evening ahead, looking forward to it, and then she blinked in the brilliant light which was streaming in through the windows. How bright the sun is all of a sudden, blinding, really, she muttered to herself. Rising, Emma walked over to the sofa and sat down.

She closed her eyes, wanting to shut out that harsh light which was flooding the room. But it seemed to penetrate through the thin skin of her old lids and she lifted them, stared out into that most extraordinary and unnatural radiance. Emma's eyes narrowed as she shaded them with her hand. How very dazzling it is, she thought again. I must tell Paula to get blinds for this office. It's quite unbearable in here on such a sunny day.

To avoid the intense glare Emma turned her head. Her gaze rested on the photograph frames on the table next to the sofa. The silver and the brass and the glass glittered sharply in the luminescence that now washed over her office, and there was a curious luster to those well-loved faces that stared back at her and so hauntingly. Yes, they had been haunting her lately... Laura and Blackie, her brothers Winston and Frank, and Paul. Oh yes, always her dearest Paul. In the last few days their faces had been so vividly clear in her imagination, their voices so strong and vibrant in her mind. They were as real to her as when they had been alive.

It seemed to Emma that the past had started to acquire a greater and more pronounced reality than the present. She was constantly invaded by memories, memories of years gone by, and they rushed at her with a force and clarity that stunned. They engulfed her, led her into other regions of time, and frequently she felt that time itself had been suspended at some juncture long ago when she had been a young woman. Yes, her dear, dead loved ones had begun to completely tenant her waking moments, encroach on her restless nights. For the past week she had dreamed so many strange dreams and they were there with her in those dreams.

Emma reached for Paul's picture, smiling to herself. She held it tightly between her hands, looking down into his face. How often she had picked up this particular photograph in the last forty-eight hours, irresistibly drawn to it, continually magnetized

by his smile, his laughing eyes.

The intensity of the coruscating light sharpened so markedly Emma blinked again. Her whole office was glowing with a shimmering iridescence. It was as if thousands of lights had been turned on and were focused on the very center of the room. She hugged Paul's picture close to her body and gazed wide-eyed into that supernatural light, no longer disturbed by its refulgence. It was glorious and it had an aura of splendor.

But after a few moments of gazing into it she leaned her head against the cushions and closed her eyes. Emma let out a tiny sigh of pleasure. She was filled with happiness, the kind of happiness she had never known before or believed existed. A feeling of warmth began to spread through her body. How lovely it is, she thought. And she, who had suffered from the cold all of her life, was suffused with that warmth and with a peacefulness that was perfection itself. She felt drowsy, enervated, without strength. And yet somehow Emma recognized she was stronger.than she had ever been in her whole life. And gradually she became aware of something else. He was here. In this room with her. That was the presence she had felt a few minutes ago.

He walked through the light, coining toward her, growing closer and closer. But he was so young... he looked exactly the way he had that night when she had first set eyes on him at the Ritz Hotel during the First World War. He was wearing his army uniform. Major Paul McGill of the Australian Corps. He was standing over her, smiling that engaging smile of his, the blue eyes so wide and clear and spilling his love for her. "I knew I'd find you here in the office, Emma," Paul said, "but it's time for you to stop. Your work on this earth is finished. You have accomplished all you had to accomplish, done everything you had to do. And now you must come with me. I've waited for you for over thirty years. Come, my Emma." He smiled at her and held out his hand. Emma siglied through her smiles. "Not yet, Paul," she said. "Don't take me yet. Let me see them again... Paula and Emily. They'll be here any minute. Let me say good-bye' to my girls. Then I'll come with you and willingly so. 1 want to be with you now. I too know it is time for me to leave." Paul smiled and moved away from the sofa, stepjted into the core of the glorious shining light. "Paid, wait for me, my darling," Emma cried. He answered, "Yes, I'm here. I'll never leave you again. You're safe now, Emma." She reached out her arms to him, straining tmvard him.

The photograph fell out of her arms, crashed to the floor, the glass shattering. Emma felt so weak she did not have the strength to pick it up. She did not even have the strength to open her eyes.

Paula and Emily, entering the adjoining office, heard the sudden noise. They looked at each other in panic and ran into their grandmother's office.

Emma lay quite motionless against the cushions. In repose her face was so still, so quiet, they were both unnerved. Paula put.a calming hand on Emily's arm and together they approached the sofa. They stood looking down at their grandmother in apprehension.

"She's just having one of her little snoozes," Emily whispered, instantly filling with relief. She noticed the photograph on the floor, picked it up, returned it to its given place.

But Paula was regarding the still and gentle face more closely. She saw the pinched nose, so white around the nostrils, the pale lips, the chalky pallor of the cheeks. "No, she's not dozing." Paula's mouth began to tremble uncontrollably. "She's dying, Grandy's dying."

Emily's face paled and she went rigid with fear. Her green eyes, so like Emma's, welled. "No, no, it can't be so. We must call Doctor Hedley immediately."

Paula's throat tightened and tears sprang into her eyes. She flicked them away with a trembling hand. "It's too late, Emily. I think she only has a few minutes." Paula repressed a sob and knelt at Emma's feet, took one of her frail old hands in hers. "Gran," she said softly. "It's me, Paula."

Emma's lids lifted. Instantly her face lit up. "I waited for you, darling, and for Emily. Where is she? I can't see her." Emma's voice was feeble, fading.

"I'm here, Grandma," Emily gasped, choking on her words. She too knelt down and took Emma's other hand in hers.

Emma saw her, half-inclined her head. She closed her eyes but opened them at once. She straightened up with a small burst of energy and stared directly into Paula's tear-stained face. Her voice was very weak yet clear, almost youthful, as she said, "I asked you to hold my dream... but you must also have your own dream, Paula, as well as mine. And you too, Emily. And you must both hold on to your dreams... always." She lay back against the sofa as if exhausted and her eyelids drooped.

Her two granddaughters gazed at her speechlessly, clinging to her hands, seared by their grief, their strangled sobbing the only sound in the room.

All of a sudden Emma opened her eyes for a second time. She smiled at Paula and then at Emily before looking away. She directed her gaze into the far, far distance, as if she saw a face they could not see and someone who was visible only to her.

"Yes," Emma said, "I know it is time now."

Her green eyes stretched, became very bright and shining, and they glowed with the purest of inner light. And she smiled her incomparable smile which illuminated her face with radiance, ana then her expression became one of rapture and perfect joy as she looked for the last time on her granddaughters. Her eyes closed.

"Gran, Gran, we love you so much." Emily began to weep as if her heart would break.

"She's at peace," Paula whispered, her mouth twisting in pain and sorrow. Tears were trickling down her face. After a moment she stood up. Leaning over her grandmother, she kissed her on the lips, her tears dripping onto Emma's cheeks. "You'll always be in my heart, Gran. All the days of my life. And you are the very best part of me."

Emily had been kissing Emma's small hand over and over and over again, and now she too rose. Paula moved to one side so that her cousin could also bid Emma farewell.

Reaching out, Emily stroked her grandmother's cheek, then she kissed her on the lips. "As long as I'm alive you'll be alive, Gran. I'll love you always. Arid I'll never forget you."

Paula and Emily automatically drew together, put their arms around each other. The two young women clung together for a few minutes, weeping, sharing their grief, endeavoring to comfort each other. Gradually they became a little calmer.

Emily stared at Paula. Tremulously she said, "I've always been afraid of death. But I'll never be afraid of it again. Ill never forget Grandy's face, the way it looked as she was dying. It was filled with such radiance, such luminosity, and her eyes were brimming with happiness. Whatever it was our grandmother saw, it was something beautiful, Paula."

Paula's throat constricted. "Yes," she said shakily. "She did see something beautiful, Emily. She saw Paul... and Winston and Frank... and Laura and Blackie. And she happy because she was going to join them at last."